Petrarch and the Development of Historical Consciousness

TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: Petrarch and the Development of Historical Consciousness

Sunday 20 July 2025 is the 721st anniversary of the birth of Francesco Petrarch (20 July 1304 to 19 July 1374), who was born in Arezzo, at that time an independent city-state, on this date in AD 1304. Petrarch himself tells us that the 20th of July in 1304 was a Monday, and that he was born at dawn.

Petrarch belongs in one sense to the late Middle Ages, and in another sense he belongs to a modern world that had not yet dawned while he was alive. Nietzsche called himself the first-born of the twentieth century; we could with some justification call Petrarch the first-born of the modern era. As a (partially) modern man in the medieval era, Petrarch contributed to the growth of a new kind of historical consciousness.

I misspoke several times in his episode in regard to dates, but this was already the second recording because the slides didn't work for the first recording, and I didn't want to record it a third time.

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#philosophy #history #PhilosophyofHistory #FrancescoPetrarch #renaissance #HistoricalConsciousness #RaymondAron #humanism #MedievalHistory #MiddleAges #modernity